Methodological issues in developing a multi-dimensional coding procedure for small group chat communication

In CSCL research, collaboration through chat has primarily been studied in dyadic settings. This article discusses three issues that emerged during the development of a multi-dimensional coding procedure for small group chat communication: a) the unit of analysis and unit fragmentation, b) the reconstruction of the response structure and c) determining reliability without overestimation. Threading, i.e. connections between analysis units, proved essential to handle unit fragmentation, to reconstruct the response structure and for reliability of coding. In addition, a risk for reliability overestimation was illustrated. Implications for analysis methodology in CSCL are discussed

Community Representations in Learning Communities

This conceptual paper revisits a set of pivotal learning community notions filtered through sociological and community psychology perspectives to unravel representations of the community construct within learning contexts. A conceptual review of sociological and community psychology perspectives on the community construct is initially presented. These representations act as lens for a further integrative conceptual review of the community construct in pivotal learning community notions. This integrative conceptual review shows that although most learning communities share a basic set of community representations, some foundational differences are also observed. Our contribution aims to enhance readers’ understanding of how “community” is represented in learning communities, which in turn can inform any design decisions and facilitation strategies by learning community researchers and practitioners

A primer on emergence and design in learning communities:A conceptual orientation whose time has come

In this conceptual paper, the notions of Communities of Practice, as representative (self-) emergent learning communities, and Communities of Learners, as representative (instructionally) designed learning communities, are examined in accordance with their original theoretical conceptions and specifications. By unravelling the conceptualizations of Communities of Practice and Communities of Learners through the lens of emergence and design in social learning structures, this paper aims to serve as a springboard for practitioners and researchers to systematically consider the aspects of emergence and design when “orchestrating” and/or supporting learning communities in or beyond educational settings. Instead of an a priori designation of a learning community notion to an existing community or a community to be, researchers and practitioners should consider the aspects of emergence and design by reflecting on at least the following questions: Is the learning community of interest emergent and self-organized or is it to be intentionally and prescriptively formed? And, what does this imply for research and practice

Unfolding perspectives on networked professional learning: Exploring ties and time

Networked learning and learning networks are commonplace concepts in most contemporary discourse on learning in the 21st century. This special issue provides a collection of studies that address the need for a growing body of empirical work to extent the limited understanding of the use and benefits of networks in relation to learning and professional development. In this article we attempt to offer a synthesis of the studies presented in this special issue and reflect on their findings.  The studies in this issue present a rich combination of networked professional learning research addressing issues related to the composition and structure of learning networks, their content and activities, showing how multi-faceted research in the field of networked learning really is. Based on the findings and methods used in the articles in this issue, we articulate some recommendations for further research. The recommendations are focused on the need for advanced multi-level analysis to understand the complexity of learning ties, the need for employing a multi-method research approach to triangulate and contextualize findings, the need to conduct process and time-based analysis and finally the need to further develop a theory and toolkit for applying Social Network Analysis in the context of networked learning.

Roles for structuring groups for collaboration

The emergence of productive collaboration benefits from support for group interaction. Structuring is a broad way to refer to such support, as part of which roles have become a boundary object in computer-supported collaborative learning. The term structuring is related to—yet distinct from—other approaches to support such as scaffolding, structured interdependence, and scripting. Roles can be conceived as a specific (set of) behavior(s) that can be taken up by an individual within a group. They can be assigned in advance or emerge during group interaction. Roles raise individual group member’s awareness of their own and fellow group member’s responsibilities, and they make an individual’s responsibilities toward the group’s functioning visible for all group members. In future research, pedagogical issues with respect to role design, assignment, and rotation as well as automated detection and visualization of emergent roles, should be addressed

Impact of a Short-Term Professional Development Teacher Training on Students' Perceptions and Use of Errors in Mathematics Learning

Using errors in mathematics may be a powerful instructional practice. This study explored the impact of a short-term professional development teacher training on (a) students' perceptions of their mathematics teacher's support in error situations as part of instruction, (b) students' perceptions of error situations while learning, and (c) mathematics teacher's actual error handling practices. Data were gathered from eight secondary schools involving eight teachers and 251 Form 3 (Grade 11) students in the Dar es Salaam region in Tanzania. To explore the effects of a short-term professional development teacher training, we used an exploratory quasi-experimental design with parallel pre-test and post-test instruments. Half of the teachers participated in the short-term professional development training in which they encountered and discussed new ways for utilizing student errors for instruction and provision of (plenary) feedback. Questionnaire scales were used to measure students' perceptions of errors and perceptions of teacher support in error situations, along with videotaped lessons of plenary feedback discussions. Data were analyzed by latent mean analysis and content analysis. The latent mean analysis showed that students' perceptions of teacher support in error situations (i.e., "error friendliness") significantly improved for teachers who received the training but not for teachers who did not receive it. However, students' perceptions of anxiety in error situations and using errors for learning (i.e., "learning orientation") were not affected by the training. Finally, case studies of video-recorded plenary feedback discussions indicated that mathematics teachers who received the short-term professional development training appeared more error friendly and utilized errors in teaching

Methodological challenges for collaborative learning research

Research on collaborative learning, both face-to-face and computer-supported, has thrived in the past 10 years. The studies range from outcome-oriented (individual and group learning) to process-oriented (impact of interaction on learning processes, motivation and organisation of collaboration) to mixed studies. Collaborative learning research is multi-disciplinary. This introduces a multitude of theoretical accounts for collaborative learning, accompanied by a broad spectrum of methods to study processes and outcomes of collaboration. This special issue will provide an overview of methods that are at the core of current research effort, but also identifies opportunities and problems to sensibly combine methods into mixed method approaches

The effect of functional roles on group efficiency

The usefulness of ‘roles’ as a pedagogical approach to support small group performance can be often read, however, their effect is rarely empirically assessed. Roles promote cohesion and responsibility and decrease so-called ‘process losses’ caused by coordination demands. In addition, roles can increase awareness of intra-group interaction. In this article, the effect of functional roles on group performance, efficiency and collaboration during computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) was investigated with questionnaires and quantitative content analysis of e-mail communication. A comparison of thirty-three questionnaire observations, distributed over ten groups in two research conditions: role (n = 5, N = 14) and non-role (n = 5, N = 19), revealed no main effect for performance (grade). A latent variable was interpreted as ‘perceived group efficiency’ (PGE). Multilevel modelling (MLM) yielded a positive marginal effect of PGE. Groups in the role condition appear to be more aware of their efficiency, compared to groups in the ‘non-role’ condition, regardless whether the group performs well or poor. Content analysis reveals that students in the role condition contribute more ‘task content’ focussed statements. This is, however, not as hypothesised due to the premise that roles decrease coordination and thus increase content focused statements; in fact, roles appear to stimulate coordination and simultaneously the amount of ‘task content’ focussed statements increases

The future of student self-assessment: a review of known unknowns and potential directions

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10648-015-9350-2This paper reviews current known issues in student self-assessment (SSA) and identifies five topics that need further research: (1) SSA typologies, (2) accuracy, (3) role of expertise, (4) SSA and teacher/curricular expectations, and (5) effects of SSA for different students. Five SSA typologies were identified showing that there are different conceptions on the SSA components but the field still uses SSA quite uniformly. A significant amount of research has been devoted to SSA accuracy, and there is a great deal we know about it. Factors that influence accuracy and implications for teaching are examined, with consideration that students’ expertise on the task at hand might be an important prerequisite for accurate self-assessment. Additionally, the idea that SSA should also consider the students’ expectations about their learning is reflected upon. Finally, we explored how SSA works for different types of students and the challenges of helping lower performers. This paper sheds light on SSA research needs to address the known unknowns in this fieldFirst author funding via Ramón y Cajal program by the Spanish Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (Referencia: RYC-2013-13469) is acknowledge

Chat-based problem solving in small groups: Developing a multi-dimensional coding scheme

Paper presented at the 11th Biannual Conference of the European Association for Research in Learning and Instruction, EARLI 2005, Nicosia, Cyprus. Retrieved July 18, 2007 from http://www.cis.drexel.edu/faculty/gerry/pub/earli2005jw.pdf.Collaboration through chat communication has been primarily studied in dyadic settings in the domain of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL). In the ‘Virtual Math Teams’ (VMT) project small groups of three to five students collaborate through chat to solve a math problem. As part of a multi-method analysis toolkit a coding scheme was devised to conduct quantitative content analysis. During the calibration several methodological problems emerged. Firstly, the analysis required that the interaction structure (i.e., who responds to whom) would be reconstructed. Secondly, the diversity of processes of interest (e.g., conversational and problem solving acts) proved to be problematic. Although initially assumed independent, ties could not be avoided. Reliability computation for threading and coding proved challenging, for example not all utterances are valid analysis units for a dimension and results in overestimation of reliability. Reliability for most dimensions was satisfactory. Coding of the math dimension proved a bridge too far due to subtle nuances; hence methods like conversation analysis may be more applicable. The implications of the methodological issues for analysis of chat communication are discussed